Rainfall
by KuryakinGirl
Summary: With weather delays, Syd has some time to share her soul with Weiss.


Disclaimer—Characters belong to JJ Abrams. No copyright infringement intended. Any similarity to events or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.  
  
Author's Notes—To Dis, my beta, my rock. To the rain and an Old 97s CD for the inspiration.  
  
Spoilers—Through Blowback, albeit minor.  
  
Feedback—Always greatly appreciated.  
  
Archive—Lemme know, thanks.  
  
Rainfall—With weather delays, Syd has some time to share her soul with her best friend.  
  
A flash illuminated the dark blue curtains for a split second, followed immediately by a deep, severe rumbling and an exhausted sigh from her lips as she eased the curtains back to one side, looking out at the pouring rain. "This stinks..."  
  
He glanced up at her from the armchair that had seen far better days. "It could be worse," he tried, hoping to bring her at least a glimmer of hope.  
  
"How?" she asked, meeting his gaze.  
  
"Well, we're together. We're safe. If we had marshmallows, we could toast them. The roof isn't leaking."  
  
She sighed again, returning her gaze to the window. "I suppose."  
  
"Syd, c'mon," he said seriously. "This isn't anywhere near my worst case scenario."  
  
"What is?"  
  
"My worst case scenario?"  
  
She nodded, allowing the curtains to drift closed again. Moving slowly, she eased down on the couch that had gone out of style at least a decade earlier, maybe even two.  
  
"Well," Weiss began. "It includes a room filled with scorpions as I try to diffuse a nuclear bomb while my comm malfunctions and the whole fate of the world rests in these pudgy fingers." He glanced at his hands in the flickering candlelight--the power had gone out hours ago.  
  
"That would be worse than this," she admitted. "Though, y'know, I have every faith in the world in you. You'd manage."  
  
"Before or after the scorpions eat me?"  
  
"I would hope before. I don't think you can be an undead spy."  
  
Weiss made a face. "That sounds like a really campy B-side flick."  
  
Syd nodded in agreement. "Sounds like something Marshall would like and give us a thirty minute exposition on the plot and special effects."  
  
"Just half an hour?" Weiss laughed. "Oh, no. I'm sure it'd be, at minimum, two hours."  
  
"You're probably right," she conceded. "But he'd be awfully sweet to watch."  
  
"There are worse things, I guess," Weiss said, shrugging slightly.  
  
"Like a scorpion guarded nuclear weapon with a dead comm unit, or being stuck in an old CIA safe house with no power, a dead generator, no food, while a miserable thunderstorm rages outside?"  
  
He regarded her for a minute. "What is it?"  
  
She frowned, looking at him. "What's what?"  
  
"Cabin fever? Rainy day blues? What's got you so down?"  
  
"Just... I'd wanted to get this done and go home."  
  
"Nobody's going anywhere in this weather. Our contact was the one who called to reschedule. There's not much we can do. Except, maybe shadow puppets." Weiss linked his thumbs, his fingers waving at her.  
  
She smiled. Slightly.  
  
"A pity smile? That's all I get?"  
  
"It was a valiant, valiant effort, but it just didn't quite work."  
  
"There's always charades."  
  
"Nah."  
  
"I spy?"  
  
She shook her head.  
  
"Eric Says?"  
  
"You mean Simon Says."  
  
"No, I mean Eric says. There's no Simon here. If there is, then we do have some security issues after all."  
  
"I just... I'm not in a playful mood, I'm sorry."  
  
"What's bugging you, seriously, Syd, and don't tell me nothing, because you're not quite you."  
  
She looked down, at the tiny candle sitting on the coffee table between them. "Marshmallows really would be good right now."  
  
Weiss stood, moving over to sit beside her. "What is it?" he asked gently.  
  
"Just... been thinking."  
  
"About Vaughn?" he asked knowingly.  
  
"Yeah. And Dixon. Just... the other guys I usually worked with in the field."  
  
Weiss pondered that for a moment, not quite sure how to respond.  
  
"Not that... not that you're not great," she said, having caught a glimpse of Weiss's wheels turning in his head. "Just... I worked with Dixon forever. I always knew where I stood with him, well, until we neared the end of SD-6, but... You just get so used to things. Even as a spy. Which is dangerous, I realize. Predictability can get you killed. But there's part of me that wants to be the grad student/secret agent still. There's part of me that misses that, my first real taste of this work. Then there's part of me that misses my work on taking down SD-6. I was so goal oriented then. Now? Now..."  
  
"Now it's all different."  
  
"Well, yes and no. I mean, it was all different after Danny died and I found out what SD-6 really was. And that was hard to deal with. Y'know, the people were really great. Sloane and a few others being notable exceptions." She stopped, rubbing her hands over her face. "I think I'm just jetlagged."  
  
"Y'know what I think?"  
  
"That I'm crazy?"  
  
He shook his head. "That you're still trying to process everything. Everything like your mom, all your missions. I mean, there are quiet Sunday afternoons when I look back on my years with the CIA and it's the craziest thing ever. To think that I've been that guy with pudgy fingers, trying to save the world. Who in their right mind would ever peg me as a spy? When you think 'espionage agent,' you don't see a thirty-something overweight bachelor. You see somebody like... well, like Vaughn. That's the expectation."  
  
"Sorta goes back to the whole predictability thing... which can get you killed."  
  
"Yeah, I guess."  
  
"It's just... stuck in this house in the rain, all I can do is think. And I don't want to. If I can work, I can push through it all because I have to. With nothing else to do, all that's left is thinking about this insanity. I mean... there's no one that I can talk to about this besides you, Dad, and Dr. Barnett. You and Dad, I know, are getting tired of all this because I know I am. And with Barnett, I'm not one hundred percent sure I can trust her. I know she wants to help and all but... it's just so hard, Weiss."  
  
"Let me correct you on one little thing. I'm not tired of listening to your thoughts and I never will be. I told you that you still had me and that I have your back and I do. I want to, but I can't help, I can't pretend to even know where to begin unless you talk to me, Syd. And we really haven't talked in a while until tonight."  
  
"I didn't mean to imply that I don't think you'll help me. It's just that I don't even know where to begin, how to tell you the ways that I need to be helped. I'm just a mess."  
  
"Nah, not 'just a mess.' In a bad spot? That I'd agree to. Just remember that my ears are always open to what you might think might be inane ramblings. My shoulders are pretty broad; they can soak up all the tears you can throw at them. You just test 'em out. I dare you."  
  
One corner of her mouth turned up in a slight smile.  
  
"Almost there! C'mon, where's the other half?"  
  
"Still lost in a fog somewhere," she said, her head tipping back against the couch.  
  
He eased his arm around her shoulders gently. "You'll always have a lighthouse. You just gotta look."  
  
She glanced up at him, in his warm brown eyes for a moment before her head eased onto his shoulder. "We have to be crazy, Weiss."  
  
"Why do you say that?"  
  
"What we submit to, what we subject ourselves to on an almost daily basis. We have to be complete crazies."  
  
"Nah. We're just highly qualified civil servants. Even though we can't really admit to it in public."  
  
"See, that's crazy. We give a party line about being State Department employees when that's so completely not what we do."  
  
"Yeah, but we can't exactly be spies effectively if everyone knows that we're spies," Weiss pointed out gently. "There's a little logic to it..."  
  
"But everybody we fight, people like Sark... they know we're spies. They know it and they recognize us on sight. That little logic really isn't much at all. I mean, if they really wanted to find us at home, they could. DMV records, banking records... With how rampant identity theft is, you would think that the most evil, vile criminals who have experience at all sorts of felony would have the techniques to get exactly what they want. They'd have us figured out by now. All Sark would have to do is plant a bomb in our apartment building, Weiss. The Covenant took me once; they could do it again and easily. It's just stupid that we lead double lives upon double lives."  
  
Syd just wasn't thinking clearly. She knew protocols were there to protect her. She wouldn't jump through the hoops just for the sake of jumping. There was a reason to all of it. "Syd, if some new player bursts onto the scene, and they know who we are before we know them, then they've got so great an advantage over us that it's game over."  
  
"I just hate this life," she said, frustration evident in her voice and expression.  
  
"Why?" Weiss asked, rather taken aback. This wasn't his Sydney. For a moment, he wondered if she'd been doubled. If his partner was actually some criminal with her face.  
  
"The only people I talk to are people from work. When I worked for SD-6, at least I still had Will and Francie, and for a long time Danny. I had my professors, classmates... Now all I have is you with Will in witness protection and Francie and Danny both dead... With them, we could talk about movies and music and books. I could ask them what was going on in their lives and it was different. But now, really all you and I talk about is work and those two years. All I hear about is what I missed and it has a physical embodiment in Vaughn's marriage to Lauren. I can't escape it. I can't get past it. It's right there, right in front of me, like a slap to the face. It's overwhelming and frustrating and, as much as I love you and our friendship, Weiss, I have such big holes in my life. I don't expect you to understand. I don't expect you to know how I feel. I don't know if I can even adequately describe this... this emptiness and loneliness. It's like... sorta like if you break a tooth, right? And there's all those nerve endings exposed and it's all jagged. It hurts if you brush against it. It hurts if you do nothing. It just hurts."  
  
Somewhere in the middle of her speech, tears formed and escaped down her cheeks. Weiss dried them gently as he put together his response. "You're right. I don't know what a lot of your life is like. I remember the last two years. I've never had my best friend doubled or my fiancée killed because of what I do. I've never even had a fiancée for that matter. No one else in my family is in the espionage business. While I don't have many friends I keep up with outside of work, I do have my family to talk to about mundane and boring things like second mortgages, trying to put together a bicycle on Christmas Eve night with instructions that have been badly translated from the original Japanese, and issues with car radiators. If you'd like a little dose of reality, I'd be more than happy to put you in touch with my mother, who would love to ask you why one of her sons—yours truly—still isn't married, as she asks me that every time I talk to her. Although extended conversations with her really are worse than most near-death experiences. Given the option, sometimes I think I'd rather take another gunshot wound. And then I remember what she did the last time I was shot. She kept a vigil at my bedside almost constantly and nagged me in my drugged up state. The woman really should be stopped."  
  
"Your mom could be worse..."  
  
"Man, you really are in an awful mood. You're being extremely too hard on yourself. You can't control your parents. You have no responsibility for their actions. It doesn't reflect on you. At all. And you were right earlier--I really don't know how it hurts. Your whole life got turned upside down and there was very little you could do about it. Everything constant in your life was completely destroyed. Marshall's a dad now. Sloane's left the dark side, or... okay, maybe not. Vaughn is married. And I lost weight. I can see how all of that can be traumatic. And I applaud your efforts to come back. If this isn't what you want, though... If this isn't something you're comfortable with anymore, then more power to you if you decide to walk away. Just know I'm always gonna be here, Syd. Always."  
  
She sighed softly, leaning against him, her head on his shoulder. "I don't know what I want," she admitted in a whisper. "It's just overwhelming sometimes."  
  
"That's when you need to come to me. Before you can't take it anymore," he said, idly stroking her hair. "I'm not the smartest guy, the one who knows the right thing to say all the time, but I promise you that I'm always gonna try my best."  
  
"I know."  
  
"Okay."  
  
"S'just the rain, I think," she said as thunder shook the safe house again.  
  
"You and I both know it's not," he said gently. "And it's okay if it's not. It's okay not to be okay sometimes."  
  
"I just hate that."  
  
"I know you do," he murmured before chastely kissing the top of her head.  
  
Sydney's eyes drifted closed as she felt, maybe for the first time in a long while, like herself. She'd gotten all of that off her chest without fear of judgment, without a fear of it coming back to haunt her later. She'd confessed it all to the one best friend she had left. "For the record..."  
  
"Mm?"  
  
"You don't have pudgy fingers."  
  
End. 


End file.
